Trust: How to Trust the Right People

Especially when we have not had good trust experiences in early life, knowing who to trust and who not to can be tough. The take-home: You must talk about it.Spotting people you should not trust:

It shouldn’t come as a surprise that those who have had bad experiences with trust early in life are often the ones who have trouble finding and choosing trustworthy people in their adult lives. Let’s look at how this works.

Let’s say that in early life, our primary caregivers were not trustworthy. Human connection is a life and death need, so most of us find a way to establish a bond and keep it going at whatever cost. Some children learn to deny the need for any connection, but most learn to ignore the untrustworthiness of their caregivers. We act as if it were normal to be misunderstood, not seen, seen as what we are not, used for someone else’s purposes or treated inconsistently. I’m sure there are more, but this is a start. The result is that we develop blind spots. We learn to discount our own naturally accurate instincts about human interaction. What I see as a therapist is that people who have had bad experiences with trust usually have the right instincts. They see the red flags, but override them.

If you have blind spots, what can you do?

What are red flags? Anything that makes you uncomfortable or off balance could be one. They can be things that show the other person disregarding your needs, insensitive to you, preoccupied with their own needs or comfortable doing more taking than giving.

More often than not untrustworthy people betray themselves right from the beginning of a new relationship. The red flags usually appear way before it is too late. This isn’t always true, but how many bad marital partners first showed their stripes long before there was a commitment.

If you know and admit to yourself that you have personal blind spots, you will gain a big advantage. Asking yourself if the other person, in some way, made you uncomfortable is a good start. But you may find yourself wondering if you are being “fair” to the other person. Was it my fault? Am I being too sensitive? Untrustworthy people will be the first to agree.

Perhaps the big question in your mind is what does the other person think of you. That can block you from asking the more important question, what do I think of them? You owe it to yourself to take time to think carefully about what you have heard and seen and what you felt about it.

The best advice I have is to run it by someone else. Even if you are embarrassed, it will help to tell someone about your misgivings. Discuss the possible red flags you might have seen, and how you evaluated them. Another person won’t have your blind spots, so even if your tastes are different, they may be able to help you spot trouble before you are in too deep. It is almost always better to change your mind sooner rather than later, even if it means considerable pain and upheaval.

Here are the steps:

1. Ask yourself if you have seen red flags, even ones you considered unimportant or ignored. Have you had uncomfortable feelings that you discounted?

2. Put your observations and reactions into words and ask yourself on what basis you decided to heed them or ignore them.

3. Discuss this with someone else. Just the discussion is good, even if the other person has a bias. This is not a place where being able to manage on your own is of any value.

If you don’t see red flags, then you might just have found someone you will want to trust. red flags may tell you quickly who to eliminate, but health and positive qualities are full of surprises. It takes time to really get to know another human, so you may want to settle in and watch and listen.

Growing a relationship happens by small steps. You each take risks one at a time, and watch to see if the other person will match you. If they do, then you go to the next step. If not, raise questions. that way, you minimize the real risk. By this stepwise process you can minimize the danger and get to know each other gradually.

As the relationship grows, there is one thing that I think is subtle but especially important. Is the relationship balanced. People who have been hurt may feel they have to accept a relationship that is unbalanced in the sense of you giving more than the other person. Healthy people are not comfortable taking more than they give. If the person your are connected with doesn’t naturally even up the level of giving, then watch out. That is a kind of red flag and your investing more will not change it. It is better to back off and watch.

There is another kind of balance: Even risk. You should both be taking equal risks and accepting equal vulnerability. This might mean the vulnerability of showing that you like the other person, or giving access to private information or to your body. If the overall level of vulnerability is one-sided, then something is wrong and there will be trouble. In my view, the main driver of male chauvinism is men’s desire to avoid risk. Male chauvinist attitudes are almost always a cover up for fear of emotional vulnerability.

Hopefully, as the relationship deepens, you will find, perhaps to your surprise, that your needs are heard and taken into consideration and that what you give is noted and appreciated. When there are problems, as there inevitably will be, you are able to work them out as partners. That is what a healthy relationship feels like.

Mistrusting people who are trustworthy

If you have had trouble with trust in early life, you may not even notice trustworthy people. They may hardly register on your radar, or they may seem dull and uninteresting. The strategy is to try giving the person a chance. Perhaps they don’t seem so exciting, but there may be more subtle rewards. Again, discussing with others is a good idea. In the end, your instincts and your intellect need to be in sync and positive, but it does take time to get to know another human.

Part of coming to trust people who are trustworthy is coming to have compassion and love for ourselves. When we do, it feels much more natural and right to receive from another. If you have work to do in this area, it may be good to work on that before committing to a long term relationship. Sometimes relationships can be healing, but going into one with unfinished issues from early life can strain an otherwise good relationship. That’s where therapy comes in. Now let’s look at the issue of trust in the context of therapy.

Trust and Mistrust in Psychotherapy

If your therapist is to help you, he or she needs to be trustworthy. That means tuned in to your needs and feelings, and without a personal agenda that is different from yours. It doesn’t mean never making a mistake, but it does mean acknowledging mistakes when they happen. For better or worse, you will have to assess the trustworthiness of your therapist. This is easiest early in the relationship. Just as in other relationships, the red flags often show up early. That’s why your first impression is very important. The same interplay of blind spots and expectations applies, as does the value of talking to someone neutral if you have questions.

What is perhaps different about therapy is that the relationship is supposed to bring out your unfinished business and unfulfilled needs and wishes. It will also bring out your fears and mistrust. When you let yourself be vulnerable, then your mind will naturally be on the lookout to prevent surprises. The big point here is not to be shocked or surprised if you find yourself afraid of or mistrusting your therapist. Especially for those who have experienced betrayal or disappointment, it is natural to look for and expect something similar from your therapist, even without any evidence.

If you have been betrayed in the past, in spite of your positive initial impression, a part of your mind will almost certainly be ready to think the therapist has the same bad motivations as those who long ago betrayed you. You may not dare think this consciously or articulate it, but as time goes on, and you feel more confident, it is expectable that questions will arise. “Why did he or she say such a painful thing now? It could only be to see me hurt.”

Just as in other relationships, the weak link is your perception of the other person’s secret motivations. You may look at outward behavior and convince yourself that the only way the person could have done this is out of a desire to hurt or manipulate you. Gauging other people’s motivations is one of the biggest sources of seemingly certain but totally wrong conclusions. It is no less so in therapy. Hopefully, you will have developed a robust level of trust before that happens, so the two of you can talk it through, all the way to the bottom of the problem.

Your instinct may be to stay quiet because of dysfunctional caregivers from your past. If your early parental figures were never willing to admit they were wrong, or did it only in a way that blocked you from expressing your disappointment, you may blame yourself and feel reluctant to speak up. The worst are the ones who are apologetic about their failures but don’t change. They make it much harder for you to respect your own hurt and anger. If they gave you the job of shoring up their insecurity, then in therapy you may want to “protect” your therapist. When grown-ups fail to take responsibility for addressing their shortcomings, then the children take up the slack. Children feel responsible and naturally ashamed when they can’t fix the problem.

Dr. Smith says, “You must speak up.” I can’t emphasize this enough. It is really hard to get yourself to take the risk of bringing up questions about your therapist. You have to do it, because if you don’t, then your mind will settle on the silent conclusion that your therapist is not trustworthy, and the old defenses will shield you from healing and growing.
Every therapist has made mistakes. Therapists are professionals and are accustomed to being held accountable and even criticized. A good one will not be defensive but will be open to the possibility of having made an error or shown a dysfunctional side. He or she will be ready to work with you to evaluate the situation so as to understand just what happened and why. A therapist who has been taught to remain “neutral” may not be as actively helpful, but should not be actively defensive or blaming.

If your therapist does not respond in a professional way, then he or she may not be the therapist for you. Once again, it will help to confer with others.

So, Nina, I hope these posts answer some of your questions. I welcome your comments and everyone else’s as this is a very big and important subject.

8 Comments

As I read your last two posts on trust I could identify with much of what you shared. Your last post just really resounded with me, especially about the need to take small steps to trip use someone and I’ll add including therapists. Trusting my therapist was the most difficult part of therapy and took a very long time. In fact, there are times when I still struggle with this. We talk about it often. I’m not afraid to talk about trust any more, at least not with my therapist. What amazes me is how much power there is in our pasts that can still affect us even when we are older. The feelings in therapy seem so real and feel very intense. I am still amazed by this. If you have been through child trauma, I would dare to say that for everyone in that position trusting your therapist will be the most difficult part of therapy, not only in the beginning, but for a long time. But it does get better with time, especially if your therapist is real, trustworthy, warm, and caring with flexible but ethical boundaries. Thank you Dr. Smith for detailing the nuances, struggles, feelings, and process of trusting in life and in therapy. Currently I am struggling with conflicting feelings of love and hate in therapy. I know they are the feelings of a child, and I know why I feel this way, but knowing doesn’t take the feelings away. I wish it did! But it’s not that easy of a process for me.

I’d add-talk to numerous people about behavior that makes you uncomfortable. There are so many unhealthy people in the world, and we tend to flock together. I received unhelpful feedback when I discussed red flags with others-even my therapist. She advised me to be understanding and accepting of behavior I should have run from.

Anyway…a few years ago I was experiencing intense, painful transference with my a different therapist. It ended badly. My criticisms of him made him feel very hurt and angry and he abruptly terminated my therapy. I was traumatized-it was horrible.

It’s now 3 years later. I am not seeing another therapist and have no plans to. Some good things came out of my experience in ‘therapy’ (not quite sure I can accurately call it that). Somehow those intensely needy feelings from childhood have…I don’t know, gone. I just feel more adult and less needy. I’m not sure how that happened since my therapist rejected me very coldly and unprofessionally, but it did.
Maybe I just really got it.
Not ‘getting it’ is an excruciating position to be in.
Even though my therapist rejected me and I not only didn’t get the love I craved, I got rejected, I still got out of transference.
That didn’t even seem possible at the time. I thought the only way out of transference was either obtaining his love or existential despair (loneliness, emptiness).
It turns out there’s a third possibilty, you don’t get the love and you’re okay. Your world blows up and you’re alive and whole.
I really don’t know how that happened.
I certainly am not more trusting since my rejection-by-therapist; I am probably less.
But somehow I feel pretty good-even though I am still afraid and avoidant of intimacy.

By “got it” I mean I got on every level of my being that I would not get the love I craved from him or anybody. I knew that intellectually from the beginning, but a a part of me did not accept it and hoped he would love me (and that’s putting it mildly, it was a crazy-intense hope and longing).

I grieved that and I don’t even feel sad about it anymore. It seems like a horrific dream-nightmare I was once in.

The issue of trust is a difficult one, and I’m struggling with it right now. I alternate between idealizing my therapist and mistrusting him. Unfortunately, I can’t tell if the mistrust is due to genuine red flags that I’ve detected or if it’s due to my own issues around trust and intimacy that are brought to the surface by our therapeutic relationship.

I did manage to discuss my feelings of transference with him. It was very difficult due to the overwhelming shame I experienced around the transference. (That was before I discovered this blog and realized that feelings of shame are commonly associated with transference.) Anyway, I talked to him about it, and now the feelings of shame are gone.

I know I have to talk to him about my feelings of mistrust, but I’m afraid he’s going to feel attacked. I’m afraid that no matter how I frame the issue, he’s going to think I’m attacking his character. Also, I’m not entirely sure what the discussion will accomplish. I mean, I know it can lead to progress in therapy, but it won’t necessarily resolve my doubts about his trustworthiness. After all, what’s he going to say? “You’re right, I’m not trustworthy. You shouldn’t trust me.” The more untrustworthy someone is, the less likely they’ll admit it.

One idea about approaching an issue of trust with a therapist would be that trust is based on one’s perception of the other’s inner motivations. That is something that is not visible or accessible to outsiders. Furthermore, it is regularly a source of mistaken assumptions. This is one of the main causes of strong feelings and major conflicts in marriages as well as therapy. So it is impossible to know for sure whether someone is trustworthy. In the end, trust is taking a risk. The point is that it is completely understandable to have questions about trust. Once the question is asked, it is often possible in the discussion to become more comfortable about what the other person’s inner thoughts really are. Truly untrustworthy people often lack the capacity for empathy, and therefore, in conversation they reveal their untrustworthiness because they can’t read the person they are talking to. They reveal that they are not really tuned in.

Hello Dr. Smith–thank you so much for responding! I ultimately decided to change therapists because, well, I was long-distance with my former therapist so we were doing phone sessions and I felt our connection diminish over time and simultaneously there were pervasive transference and counter-transference issues that I don’t think he’s trained to deal with. One of the many problems with the behavioral schools–at least 25 years ago when my therapist went to school (I think there’s more awareness now)–is inadequate training on transference/counter-transference.

Also, I took your advice in Getting the Most from Your Therapy (or maybe it was your Attachment book–I read them back-to-back so can’t remember what content is from which book) and sought a second opinion from a friend who used to be a therapist. My friend flipped out when I gave him the details of my therapy, said my therapist had no boundaries, and told me to find a new therapist. I think he overreacted, but maybe he wasn’t completely wrong.

Sometimes I think I’m just running from a difficult emotional situation, and everything else is an excuse. But, really, I feel that confronting my therapist with the questions I’d have to ask him in order to figure out if he’s trustworthy is just too scary and painful and potentially disastrous.

Anyway, I wanted to tell you that I’m reading How We Heal and Grow, and I loved your reference to the IRS! 🙂